Commercial airlines and airplane manufacturers seek to arrange passenger seats in ways that maximize the revenue-earning potential of airplanes while minimizing operating costs per passenger seat. For existing airplane models, seats are arranged with the objective of maximizing passenger comfort without reducing the number of seats, or of maximizing the number of seats at a given level of passenger comfort. In designing new airplanes seating arrangements ideally should minimize the dimensions of the airplane (and the resulting weight and aerodynamic drag) to accommodate a given number of seats at a given comfort level.
Payloads engineers are normally responsible for designing seating configurations in modern airplanes and to achieve the above goals. With respect to the arrangement of seats in each row, payloads engineers assume that overall passenger comfort is maximized by minimizing the number of seats between any passenger and the nearest aisle. Among practical configurations, those in which no passenger is more than one seat away from the nearest aisle are chosen since they are considered ideal.
For existing eight-abreast configurations having two aisles, this rule has resulted in the use of a 2.backslash.4.backslash.2 seating configuration (where a backslash (.backslash.) represents the position of an aisle and numerals are used to indicate the number of seats (not necessarily occupied by passengers) in each seating unit). The seating arrangements of U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,066,227, issued Jan. 3, 1978, to Buchsel; 4,881,702, issued Nov. 21, 1989, to Slettebak; 4,936,620, issued Jun. 26, 1990, to Francois et al.; 5,178,345, issued Jan. 12, 1993, issued to Peltola et al., and 5,180,120, issued Jan. 19, 1993, to Simpson, et al., observe these principles.
However, in contrast with the present invention, conventional configurations have failed to either maximize passenger comfort in seats of any given dimensions, maximize passenger comfort in an airplane of fixed dimensions and number and type of seats, maximize the number of passenger seats in an airplane of fixed dimensions and seat type while maintaining original passenger comfort levels, or minimize airplane dimensions for substantially the same number of passengers at substantially the same original comfort levels.
These objectives have not been achieved by the prior art because neither the percentage of available seats which are typically filled (load factor) in airline service, nor the specific seats which are filled in each possible configuration at various load factors, nor the different levels of comfort experienced by passengers seated in the different seating environments created by adjacent occupied seats, empty seats, sidewalls and aisles, have been taken into account.
In contrast, the present invention provides a unique and unobvious process for determining and maximizing the additional comfort enjoyed by passengers as a result of being seated beside occupied seats, empty seats, sidewalls and/or aisles under realistic load conditions using conventional seat assignment procedures.